Description
A young woman’s vision over a Quebec lake sends her on a search to understand her relationship to the divine. While she spends years as a cloistered nun, a young boy struggles with his Mormon upbringing and, discovering the internet, grows up to design an AI entity that stuns him by appearing sentient. Embarking on their own separate road trips, these characters unite to face the scope of their responsibilities, their understanding of what’s holy, and the very question of what it is to be a human being. Steeped in philosophy, theology, and computer science, THE ENDED WORLD is a novel for our times.
“THE ENDED WORLD is a dazzling work of imagination, a sweeping intergenerational parable of belief, selfhood, and love in the epoch of artificial intelligence. A medieval saint, a lapsed Mormon, a sentient and rogue AI: Libbie Grant has created a wondrous story of human and technological change that I will be thinking about for years to come.” -Bruce Holsinger, bestselling author of The Displacements and Culpability (Oprah’s Book Club)
“Absolutely brilliant! A richly woven tapestry of extraordinary connections and stunning parallels, THE ENDED WORLD will take you on a lyrical journey through theology, technology, and humanity and then leave you questioning everything you ever thought you knew. I cannot stop thinking about this book.” – Erin Litteken, Internationally Bestselling Author of The Memory Keeper of Kyiv
“Brilliantly structured and conceived, THE ENDED WORLD is complex, full of visions and fractal theories, and timely, as we recuperate from a pandemic and teeter on the verge of AI. More important, Grant never forgets our universal need for spiritual and human connection, weaving her prose and characters together masterfully and leaving the reader with deep appreciation for the “abundance” that life has to offer.” – Tara Lynn Masih, author of How We Disappear and The Silent Women
“Hauntingly human, this story asks you to confront the things that destroy us and feed us–how they are the same. What does it mean to sacrifice our love? Our relationships? Our ambition? The narrative claws at the fabric of what we believe and think is real, and asks us to rethink it. If we were to rend open the seams of the stars, what would we find? What mind would be staring back at us? God’s? Our own? Has there ever been a difference? What is faith, if not holding space for the questions our animal, corporeal, bodies can barely frame? What is death when our work lives beyond us and our bodies dissolve back into the earth, transmuting into rain and fire, lashing at the windows of the people we left behind?” – Kerry Pray, editor, The Book of Queer Mormon Joy
